Goodwin Liu Voted out of Senate Judiciary Committee for Third Time

Leadership Conference for Civil Rights April 8, 2011 - Posted by Avril Lighty The Senate Judiciary Committee recommended Goodwin Liu for a federal judgeship today for the third time, on a 10-8 party line vote. The seat to which he has been nominated is considered a "judicial emergency."President Barack Obama originally nominated Liu to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on February 24, 2010 .... Full Story: http://www.civilrights.org/archives/2011/04/1188-liu.html

Senate panel OKs Liu, Chen nominations - again

sfgate.com
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle
September 24, 2010 10:33 AM

(09-24) 10:33 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- The Senate Judiciary Committee approved President Obama's nominations of Goodwin Liu and Edward Chen for federal judgeships in San Francisco on party-line votes Thursday and sent them to the Senate floor for what may be their last chance to win confirmation.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/23/BAI81FILSA.DTL#ixzz10WD8PwPN

Kagan: Affirmative action good law _ good politics

Associated Press
(AP) – Jun 4, 2010

WASHINGTON — As a White House adviser Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan indicated support for affirmative action as good law and good politics.
The Clinton administration was wrestling with how to weigh in on a case involving a white New Jersey school teacher who was laid off instead of an equally senior black colleague. Kagan endorsed a narrow legal argument to try to prevent a Supreme Court ruling effectively ending affirmative action policies.

Full Story: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gqScqq5qtv4yw96QTlRrbNHhIUFAD9G4M4EG1

Breaking! Kagan Memos Reveal Nothing Shocking!

Care2Make a Difference Blog
posted by: Jessica Pieklo 7 hours ago

With confirmation hearings set to begin on June 28, and some 90,000 pages of papers released involving Kagan's work in the law, Senate Republicans are grasping for anything they can to paint Kagan as a leftist ideologue. The problem for those Republicans though is that Kagan is nothing of the sort.What the papers illustrate is Kagan's thinking as a pragmatist and a centrist. Take for example a 1997 memo on an affirmative action case, authored by Kagan when she was a presidential assistant for domestic policy. A New Jersey school district, when given the decision of firing two equally qualified teachers chose to fire the white teacher over the black one and defended the decision based on the grounds that it was part of an overall effort at maintaining diversity in the workplace.

Full Story: http://www.care2.com/causes/politics/blog/breaking-kagan-memos-reveal-nothing-shocking/

Kagan Docs Show Support For Affirmative Action

CBS News
June 4, 2010 8:17 PM

While working as a domestic policy adviser to President Clinton, Elena Kagan emphatically agreed with a proposal to strongly defend affirmative action in the Supreme Court, while at the same time siding with a white teacher who was laid off instead of a black colleague solely because of her race.
"I think this is exactly the right position--as a legal matter, as a policy matter, and as a political matter," Kagan wrote by hand in the margin of a memo from then-Solicitor General Walter Dellinger about the controversial case, Piscataway Board of Education v. Taxman.
Special Section: Elena Kagan
That posture -- strategic and careful -- is reflected throughout the 46,500 pages of documents contained in the Clinton Library and released on Friday. The documents represent about a third of the Kagan documents stored in the Library and cover her time as a deputy domestic policy adviser to President Clinton from 1997-1999.
In that role, she focused on issues ranging from tobacco negotiations and criminal law to abortion and gay rights, and she helped strategize on how best to further the President's policy agenda. Some of the documents, for example, reflect attempts to head off conservative efforts to pass a broad ban on so-called "partial-birth abortion" or to curtail abortions by minors without parental consent.
When Congress passed the partial-birth abortion ban without a narrow exception to protect a woman's health, for example, she helped defend President Clinton's veto. In the files are letters from Clinton to various religious leaders, explaining why he vetoed the ban.
And when Congress was poised to pass a law making it a crime to take minors across state lines for abortions without parental consent, she worked to find political solutions to oppose it -- such as getting statistics on how many grandmothers cared for teenagers and could technically be sent to jail under the law.
But most of the documents thus far reveal little about Kagan's personal views--and the White House has stressed they were written in her role as a policy adviser. Many are memos written to her by other members of the President's staff. Others are simply press clippings.
The affirmative action case is one of the rare instances where Kagan says what she thinks -- and it's all but certain to provoke questions about her views on racial preferences in hiring and firing.
That means Kagan's confirmation hearings, assumed just days ago to be devoid of many fireworks, will instead focus on yet another controversial social issue. This morning, Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said he found many of her memos as a law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall "troubling."
Those memos, which I reported last night, show her taking a liberal position on contentious social issues like abortion, criminal rights and gun rights -- and will give Republicans ammunition to mount a fight against her.
With the release of today's papers, now add to those contentious issues yet another one: affirmative action.
The case was poised to be one of the biggest affirmative action rulings in years: The Supreme Court had agreed to decide whether the Piscataway, New Jersey school board had discriminated against a white teacher when it fired her over of an equally qualified black teacher--solely because she was white.
The case was contentious from the beginning. The Bush Administration sued the school board, arguing it violated the white teacher's civil rights when it took her race into account. Lower courts agreed. But then Bill Clinton was elected president, and his administration tried to switch sides in the midst of the controversy and defend the school board.
When the case finally reached the Supreme Court, the Clinton Administration was faced with a dilemma. It wanted to defend the school board--and affirmative action--but it recognized it would probably lose in the conservative-leaning court. That "would be a disaster for civil rights in employment, rendering unlawful even the most carefully designed non-remedial affirmative action plans," wrote then-Solicitor General Walter Dellinger.
The Clinton Administration also concluded the school board didn't offer enough evidence to fire the white teacher in the first place.
Its solution: file a narrow, carefully-crafted brief siding with the white teacher on very narrow grounds that the board didn't defend its firing decision--which would allow the Court to dodge the broader question on affirmative action.
Ultimately, the school board used money from civil rights groups--fearful they would lose in the Supreme Court--to settle the case.
Kagan also directly expressed her views on a proposed federal law banning assisted suicide, calling it a "fairly terrible idea." That proposal came after the Justice Department took the position that federal drug laws did not trump an Oregon law allowing physician-assisted suicide. The Supreme Court ultimately agreed and upheld the Oregon law.

Full Story: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504564_162-20006885-504564.html

Kagan´s Affirmative Action Achilles Heel

American Chronicle
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
May 10, 2010

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan will plop an issue back on the nation´s table that hasn´t been seen or heard from or about in what seems like ages. And that´s affirmative action. Even before her nomination the word furiously circulated in some circles that during her six year tenure as dean of Harvard University Law School, Kagan had an abominable record on recruiting and hiring minority professors. At first glance, her record indeed looks atrocious. There were 29 new hires. They were 23 white men, 5 white women, and one Asian American woman; not one black or Latino professor in the bunch. When the dismal figure was released, the White House quickly pushed back. It issued a detailed fact sheet that essentially said that her zero hire of a black or Latino faculty member was grossly misleading. That Kagan had offered several African-American and Latino candidates visiting offers; visiting offers meaning invites to be a visiting lecturer. That´s not the same as a permanent offer for faculty spot. But the inference was that a visiting offer, if accepted, could lead to an offer of a permanent faculty position. That didn´t happen. The visiting offers were not accepted. That in itself is not a prima facie case to say that Kagan deliberately pushed diversity to the back burner at Harvard. Or even that she did not make a sincere effort to recruit minority faculty members. There are always factors, big, little and unseen in the business of faculty hires at major, even prestigious, universities. But Kagan´s motives and the effort she may have made to get a diverse faculty at Harvard Law in the end or a moot point. Her record on minority hires still stands-- 29 faculty hires, and no black or Latino hires. This is hardly a moot point.

Full Commentary: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/155363

Senate Panel Approves Nominee for Key Post at Education Department

The Chronicle of Higher Education
May 5, 2010
By Kelly Field
Washington

The U.S. Senate education committee has approved President Obama's nomination of Eduardo M. Ochoa as assistant secretary for postsecondary education, a long-open leadership spot at the Education Department.
If confirmed by the full Senate, Mr. Ochoa, who is now provost and vice president for academic affairs at Sonoma State University, in California, would take charge of the Education Department's Office of Postsecondary Education, which administers most of the federal government's programs for colleges and college students. The assistant secretary has also typically served as the chief adviser to the education secretary on higher-education issues.

Full Story: http://chronicle.com/article/Senate-Panel-Approves-Nominee/65414/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

American Association for Affirmative Action Acknowledges Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens on the Announcement of His Retirement

Association commends the Retiring Justice for his support of Equal Opportunity through Affirmative Action

For Immediate Release: April 12, 2009

Contact: Shirley J. Wilcher

202-349-9855

Washington, D.C. – The American Association for Affirmative Action (AAAA), an association of equal opportunity, diversity and affirmative action professionals, hailed Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court John Paul Stevens for his record of jurisprudence in support of equal opportunity for all Americans. He will be missed. AAAA’s President, ReNeé S. Dunman stated that, “Justice Stevens took principled stands in support of minorities and women who seek to take their rightful places in education, employment and business enterprise.” Since his confirmation in 1975, Justice Stevens understood the distinction between racial classifications that were intended to exclude and affirmative action, which is intended to aid those who suffered past discrimination and to promote diversity. As he eloquently wrote, there was a difference between a "No Trespassing" sign and a "welcome mat." Justice Stevens also recognized the authority of the US Congress to remedy discrimination against minorities and respected Supreme Court precedent, including Brown v. Board of Education.
AAAA urges the President of the United States to nominate and the Senate to confirm a successor who will continue the judicial record established by Justice Stevens. This is not the time to close the doors of equal opportunity. AAAA looks forward to a justice that will execute his or her Constitutional responsibility fully and fairly in the years to come. Ms. Dunman added: “We look forward to seeing a Court that represents all Americans on the First Monday in October.”
Founded in 1974, the American Association for Affirmative Action (AAAA) is a national not-for-profit association of professionals working in the areas of affirmative action, equal opportunity, and diversity. AAAA helps its members to become more successful and productive in their careers. It also promotes understanding and advocacy of affirmative action to enhance access and equality in employment, economic and educational opportunities.

888 16th Street, NW, Suite 800 * Washington, D.C. 20006 *202-349-9855 ex 1857 *
Fax: 202-355-1399 * http://www.affirmativeaction.org/
###

Democrat Predicts Speedy Court Confirmation. Republicans Sound Note of Caution.

The New York Times
By SEWELL CHAN
Published: April 11, 2010

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee predicted on Sunday that the Senate would confirm a replacement for Justice John Paul Stevens this summer, but his Republican counterpart would not rule out the use of a filibuster if President Obama were to nominate someone who was “clearly outside the mainstream.”
As members of Congress prepared to return on Monday from a spring recess, leaders in both parties took steps to position themselves in an emerging debate over the direction of the Supreme Court. The debate, which began when Justice Stevens announced on Friday that he would retire after 34 years on the court, is expected to be a dominant feature of the legislative session over the next several months.
Asked about the timing of a nomination, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said Sunday, “I think we’re going to hear it soon enough so we can wrap this up this summer.” He said there was “no question” that a new justice would be in place before the start of the court’s fall term.
“It would be irresponsible to do otherwise,” Mr. Leahy said on “Meet the Press” on NBC.

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/us/politics/12court.html?th&emc=th

Retiring justice an 'unexpected liberal,' negotiator

By the CNN Wire Staff
April 9, 2010 4:13 p.m. EDT

(CNN) -- Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who announced his retirement Friday, has served as a central liberal voice on the high court, at times leading negotiations to sway opinions on critical cases -- and ultimately having a remarkable impact on the court and on society at large.
After joining the court in 1975, the choice of President Gerald Ford, a Republican, Stevens went on to become "an unexpected liberal -- someone who moved to the left as the court moved to the right," said Jeffrey Toobin, CNN senior legal analyst.
But in Stevens' view, it is the court that changed, said Toobin, who recently interviewed Stevens. "I think there is something to support that view -- there are certainly areas of the law where the court has changed," Toobin said. "I also think he has changed."
Stevens "became the leader of the liberals on the court," a staunch defender of abortion rights and affirmative action, said Toobin. One decision he'll most likely be remembered for is striking down the Bush administration's treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said Toobin. Also a memorable part of Steven's legacy is the lead dissenting opinion he wrote in Bush v. Gore -- the case that ended the contested presidential election of 2000.

Full Story: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/09/stevens.biography/index.html?hpt=T1

Republicans step up opposition to liberal nominee

KPUA.net
Hawaii News
Posted: Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 10:22 AM HST


By Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans are stepping up opposition to President Barack Obama's pick for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which serves nine western states, including Hawaii. Republicans are pushing to delay next Friday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for University of California, Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu. They complain Liu had omitted more than 100 items from a questionnaire about his background. Liu has since submitted the items and apologized. Republicans say the missing records included Liu's remarks on affirmative action; school funding and what the 2008 election meant for the Supreme Court.

Full Story: http://www.kpua.net/news.php?id=19988

Senate Panel Endorses Sotomayor

The Washington Post
By NEIL A. LEWIS
July 29, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, moved closer to taking her seat on Tuesday as the Senate Judiciary Committee overwhelmingly approved her nomination and sent it on to the full Senate.
But the contentious public hearings this month and Tuesday’s largely partisan committee vote demonstrated that judicial confirmations remain a hotly contested political and ideological battleground with implications for Mr. Obama’s future choices for the courts.
The committee’s vote was 13 to 6, with Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina the only Republican joining the panel’s 12 Democrats in voting for the nomination. The action cleared the way for a Senate floor vote next week for Judge Sotomayor, who would be the 111th justice to serve on the Supreme Court, the first Hispanic and the third woman.
She is widely expected to win confirmation, as Democrats have 60 votes in the Senate and five Republicans, including Mr. Graham, have said they would vote for her.
But Senate Republicans have used the Sotomayor nomination to signal that they are determined to deny Mr. Obama an easy path as he sets about filling dozens of seats on the federal appeals courts and possibly additional vacancies on the Supreme Court.

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/us/politics/29confirm.html?bl&ex=1249012800&en=4b9c28f3756f4503&ei=5087%0A

Sotomayor: GOP cries racism, Dems cry foul

CNN.com
By Jim Acosta
CNN
June 1, 2009

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- During the presidential campaign, then-candidate Barack Obama said that he hoped his administration wouldn't get hung up on matters of race.
But several Republicans have said recently that his nomination of federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court has made race an issue.
Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called Sotomayor a racist.
Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh called the president "the greatest living example of a reverse racist," and said that he has picked another for the Supreme Court vacancy of retiring Justice David Souter. Limbaugh later equated Sotomayor to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
At issue is what she told a 2001 Duke Law School symposium about her hope that "a wise Latina woman would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Read more about Sotomayor's Duke comments
One top GOP senator said he wants more than an explanation.
"I think she should apologize, but I don't believe any American wants a judge on the bench that's going to use empathy or their background to punish someone," South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox News.
Democrats have said conservative reaction to the pick is over the line.
"She's been called the equivalent of the head of the Ku Klux Klan by Rush Limbaugh; she's been called a bigot by other Republican leaders like Newt Gingrich. I want to give her an opportunity to answer these kind of people," said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who chairs the Judiciary Committee that will conduct Sotomayor's confirmation hearing.
The ranking Republican on the committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, tried to turn down the heat over the weekend. Watch range of comments on Sotomayor and race »
"We should not demagogue race. It's an important issue in our culture and our country. We need to handle it with respect that it deserves," Sessions said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
GOP leaders have focused on Sotomayor's appellate court decision against a mostly white group of firefighters who say they were discriminated against after a promotion test was thrown out, because critics said it discriminated against minority firefighters.
But legal experts have said her full record on race isn't that controversial -- in 96 race-related cases decided by Sotomayor on the court of appeals, she and her fellow judges ruled against discrimination 78 times and agreed with the claims in 10 cases, according to Scotusblog.com.

Full Story: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/01/sotomayor.nomination/index.html

Supreme stats: 106 white males among 110 justices

The Associated Press
By MARK SHERMAN – May 20, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) — If President Barack Obama wants to make the Supreme Court more diverse, he has a wider range of options than any of his predecessors. When Ronald Reagan was president, only about 40 women served on the federal bench, the most common source of Supreme Court nominees.
Today, more than 200 women hold federal judgeships, along with 88 African-Americans, 60 Hispanics and eight Asian-Americans.
All but four of the 110 Supreme Court justices in the nation's history have been white men. Two are African-American men, Clarence Thomas and the late Thurgood Marshall, and two are white women, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor.
There has never been a Hispanic, Asian-American or Native American justice.
Ginsburg is the only female justice at the moment and most of the candidates whom Obama is considering are women.
The president also has a much wider range of experienced lawyers to draw from than Reagan did when he reached down to a midlevel appeals court in Arizona to nominate O'Connor.
"The pool was simply not as broad or as deep as it is now," said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center.
Before Jimmy Carter came to the White House in 1977, presidents beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt had put just eight women on the federal bench. Carter added 40 female federal judges in four years, including Ginsburg.
Today, 212 full-time federal judges are women, more than a quarter of the federal judiciary.

Full Story: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g0MWvmaajcjR-7g7IU-45_H3XhjAD98A5GTG0

Sonia Sotomayor Could Be on Obama's Short List for Replacing Souter

U.S. News and World Report
By Alex Kingsbury
Posted May 11, 2009

President Obama has been vague about what type of jurist he intends to nominate to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the nation's highest court. There's no end of speculation about what the president means when he says he's looking for someone with "heart and empathy" and a keen understanding of "how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives." But many think that means he intends to diversify the bench.
Indeed, analysts largely agree that Obama is looking for a candidate with a hard-knocks background and wants to appoint either a woman or a minority jurist. That puts Sonia Sotomayor, a woman of Puerto Rican descent from the Bronx who is a federal appeals court judge, atop most short lists. Others mentioned include Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Circuit Court Judge Diane Wood, and Pamela Karlan and Kathleen Sullivan, both professors at Stanford Law School.
Vetters and opposition researchers are zeroing in on Sotomayor, the perceived front-runner. A video from a 2005 forum at Duke University recently surfaced in which Sotomayor appears to jokingly refer to the Court of Appeals "making policy" (a phrase sure to enflame conservatives). But the case most mentioned by critics is her concurrence in a ruling against a group of white Connecticut firefighters who sued over a hiring policy that gave preference to minority candidates. The reverse-discrimination case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which has yet to issue a ruling.
It's both ironic and fitting, court watchers say, that Sotomayor may face the most scrutiny over an affirmative action ruling. Such cases are among the most contentious and intractable in the realm of civil rights issues. If Sotomayor is nominated, it will imply that her gender and lineage, in addition to her legal work, recommend her for the position. Of course, a diverse heritage and background aren't always indicative of a justice's take on civil rights. David Souter, who was a civil libertarian, became a staunchly liberal advocate in civil rights cases over the years. "The next justice will have to fill Souter's enormous shoes in terms of civil rights decisions," says Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "The list of potential candidates is noteworthy not only because of the diversity of the candidates themselves but also the strength of their legal work."

Full Commentary: http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2009/05/11/sonia-sotomayor-could-be-on-obamas-short-list-for-replacing-souter.html

Fair Judges Needed to Win Fair Pay

Huffington Post
Nan Aron
Posted April 28, 2009 01:46 PM (EST

The Lilly Ledbetter Act returned the law to what it had been for decades, before the Supreme Court intervened.

Now we need to pass new legislation the Paycheck Fairness Act S. 182 - and stand up for judges who uphold the Constitution and the law to provide equal justice for all, not just a few.Today, April 28, 2009, is Equal Pay Day. Today marks the point when the average woman's wages finally catch up with what the average man earned last year.
Women still earn only 78 cents for every dollar earned by a man, and for women of color, the numbers are even worse. Equal Pay Day is an important reminder of this persistent wage gap and the urgent need to take action to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work.
We've made some progress in the fight for equal pay - the first bill President Obama signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. That law reversed a damaging Supreme Court decision, which had severly limited the rights of women challenging discriminatory pay..
But the Ledbetter legislation just returned the law to what it had been for decades, before the Roberts Court interfered. We need to pass new legislation to win the fight for fair pay.
The Senate must pass the Paycheck Fairness Act S. 182, a vital next step toward achieving equal pay for equal work by amending the Equal Pay Act. President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act 45 years ago, making it illegal for employers to pay women less than men for the same work. But loopholes in the law and weak enforcement from the courts allowed many discriminatory practices to continue. The Paycheck Fairness Act addresses these concerns and equips women with the necessary tools with which to fight unequal pay.
This fight for justice has been a long one. We are all grateful for the courageous women who are willing to demand fairness. Lilly Ledbetter, who worked at Goodyear Tire in Gadsden, Alabama, never gave up the fight, despite enormous odds and personal sacrifice. She stood up for millions of working Americans, even though she will not personally benefit from the law that bears her name. Lilly Ledbetter and many others like her show that we can win if we are willing to fight back.

Full Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nan-aron/fair-judges-needed-to-win_b_192364.html